The Trump administration has reportedly fired Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, who leads the US Copyright Office, following the office’s choice to release a pre-publication version of its opinion on the fair use status of AI training data that’s made up of copyrighted information. Representative Joe Morelle, the ranking Democrat of the Committee on House Administration, called her firing an “unprecedented power grab with no legal basis,” linking the firing directly to her report, which he says amounted to her refusing “to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.” Among the report’s conclusions is that while the fair use status of AI training “will depend on what works were used, from what source, for what purpose, and  with what controls on the outputs—all of which can affect the market.” The report says research and scholarship might be fair use but says many other AI tools might not be: But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries. University of Colorado law professor Blake Reid called the report a “straight-ticket loss for the AI companies” in a post prior to reports emerged that Perlmutter had been fired, writing that he wondered “if a purge at the Copyright Office is incoming and they felt the need to rush this out.” Reid wrote that although the Copyright Office generally can’t “issue binding interpretations of copyright law,” courts turn to its expertise when drafting their opinions.Whether the Copyright Office’s release of its findings is the reason Perlmutter was cut loose or is just very curious timing isn’t clear, as the White House doesn’t seem to have commented on it. Copyright law expert Meredith Rose questioned the link, calling the report “113 pages of ‘well, it depends!’” and adding that “people who find that offensive enough to call for her ouster would have to be utter lunatics—on EITHER side of this fight.”Confusing the issue further, President Trump reposted (or ReTruthed, if you like) commentary on news of Perlmutter’s firing by a Truth Social account attributed to Mike Davis, a former legal clerk for Neil Gorsuch who was rumored last year for Trump’s Attorney General pick.“Now tech bros are going to attempt to steal creators’ copyrights for AI profits,” Davis wrote while linking to a CBS News story, “This is 100% unacceptable.” The day the Copyright Office’s report was released, President Trump also fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, whose department the Copyright Office is part of. As NPR reports, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed, without specifics, that Hayden had done “concerning things … in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children.” Every book published in the United States goes into the Library of Congress.

If you're like me, you've been anxiously searching for any relief from the Bad News™ and endless stream of AI slop plaguing your feed. Joseph Ricketts' breathtaking wildlife videos could be the antidote. An alligator taking a nap on the floor of a crystal clear spring. Schools of fish glittering in the darkness. A cosmic cloud of burnt orange tannic river swirling into clear blue water. A giant salamander battle on an Appalachian riverbed. Joseph is an ecologist, underwater videographer, and alligator researcher based in Florida. He brings a calming and curious gaze to some of the more obscure underwater vistas through his work as a scientist and wildlife researcher, with his photography and videography skills. With his undersea strobes, he casts light on the mesmerizing behavior of some of the more obscure creatures that lurk below the water's surface, creating beautiful videos while educating his audience on the vulnerable wildlife he finds there. Documenting Florida's natural springs and America's freshwater ecosystems has become a passion project. The Verge caught up with him to learn about his fascinating YouTube content. This interview has been edited for length and …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you're building a new PC in 2025, DDR5 RAM is a no-brainer since it boasts significantly higher speeds and better efficiency than DDR4 modules. However, if you already have DDR4 RAM, upgrading to DDR5 doesn't make much sense, both financially and practically. That's because upgrading to DDR5 memory isn't as straightforward as buying new RAM sticks from online retailers. If you do that, you'd quickly realize you wasted your money when you try to install it onto your motherboard.

Setting up complex passwords filled with cryptic characters is one of the best ways to keep hackers off your tail. After all, a 15+ string containing weirdly-arranged alphanumeric strings and symbols is a lot more effective at thwarting brute force and dictionary attacks than awful, easy-to-guess passkeys. The downside is that you’ll have a hard time recalling your wacky passwords, especially if you have different login credentials for all your accounts.

The iPhone 16 Pro Max, pictured here, is already pretty glassy.This morning, while summarizing an Apple “product blitz” he expects for 2027, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman writes in his Power On newsletter that Apple is planning a “mostly glass, curved iPhone” with no display cutouts for that year, which happens to be the iPhone’s 20th anniversary. That follows a report last weekend from The Information, which said that “at least one 2027 iPhone model that will place the front-facing camera underneath the screen to enable a truly edge-to-edge display.” Late last year, a report from The Elec said Apple is working with its display partners to create a bezel-less iPhone, but not one that curves the display down the side of the phone — a trick companies like Samsung and Vivo have employed in the past. But the “mostly glass, curved” part of Gurman’s prediction is more interesting to me, because what the heck does that mean? After all, I’d describe the iPhone 15 Pro sitting on my desk right now as “mostly glass,” with the only exterior metal being around the camera lenses and in its titanium edge, which the front and back curve down to. Assuming he’s not describing a banana-shaped iPhone, the closest hints are probably in Apple patents revealed over the years, like one from 2019 that describes a phone encased in glass that “forms a continuous loop” around the device. Apart from a changing iPhone, Gurman describes what sounds like a big year for Apple. He reiterates past reports that the first foldable iPhone should be out by 2027, and that the company’s first smart glasses competitor to Meta Ray-Bans will be along that year. So will those rumored camera-equipped AirPods and Apple Watches, he says. Gurman also suggests that Apple’s home robot — a tabletop robot that features “an AI assistant with its own personality” — will come in 2027. On that “personality” mention, it’s hard not to think about the adorable robotic lamp Apple’s internal researchers have been tinkering with. Finally, Gurman writes that by 2027 Apple could finally ship an LLM-powered Siri and may have created new chips for its server-side AI processing. A December report from The Information covered such a development and suggested that the team handling Apple’s new AI chips is the same Israel-based silicon design group that was “instrumental in designing” the Apple silicon chips that let the company ditch Intel chips for its Macs in 2020.

If you have just obtained your Raspberry Pi or have been using one for a while, you have realized that the terminal is where you will spend most of your time working with this device. Whether using the Pi as a DNS server for your home network, a smart home hub, a media server, or working on any other project, familiarizing yourself with basic commands is essential to make everything smoother. I have been using a Raspberry Pi for various projects, and several commands are like an everyday toolkit. Some are basic and suitable for getting started, and some are advanced, perfect for digging deeper into the system or automating tasks. Below are the main ones.

This screenshot does not involve the twist. | Image: Sandfall InteractiveClair Obscur: Expedition 33 is my favorite game of the year so far, with an exhilarating battle system, excellent exploration, and a haunting soundtrack. But I'm not the only one who loves it: the game has become a huge hit, with more than 2 million copies sold just 12 days after its late April release. "It feels very surreal," says Guillaume Broche, Sandfall Interactive's CEO and creative director.According to Broche, the game is performing "far beyond expectations" and that the team was not expecting it to "blow up" as fast as it did. "We are still in denial, basically" he says. Lead writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen adds, "I'm going to wake up tomorrow and this is all a joke, right?"A major part of Expedition 33's success is its gripping story. It kept me coming back to the game every moment I could just to see what happened next. The opening hits you with a gutpunch. Playing as Gustave, voiced by Daredevil's Charlie Cox, you learn about the tragic circumstances of the world, its characters, and the annual "Gommage" that makes everyone of a certain age disappear in a flurry of petals when a giant being called the Paintress paints a new, lower number on a giant monolith.Gustave …Read the full story at The Verge.

At the beginning of the month, things weren’t looking good for gaming site Giant Bomb after its content was put on hold amid reports of editorial interference from its parent company, Fandom. Today, some feel-good news: Giant Bomb announced it is now an independent, employee-owned entity.“Giant Bomb lives! Fandom has sold the site to us,” the outlet wrote on Bluesky yesterday evening. In a post on its website about the new development, the Giant Bomb says it’s “not serving an algorithm or executives,” and that it aims “to lean into what’s always made Giant Bomb special, and that’s the people you see and hear on our content, and our extremely passionate community.”Giant Bomb lives! Fandom has sold the site to us and it is now fully independent and employee-owned. We'll see you all on Tuesday for the Giant Bombcast.For more info right now, head over to www.giantbomb.com/join— Giant Bomb (@giantbomb.bsky.social) 2025-05-10T23:12:29.217ZThe site also announced a new subscription model, which it says “will go directly towards maintaining and growing Giant Bomb and paying the fine folks that you see on our programming week after week.”Games media has changed dramatically since Giant Bomb launched in 2008, and our new model aims to evolve with the times. We want people to be able to see our content whether they’re able to support us monetarily or not, so the large majority of what we put out will be available for free. That’s how Fortnite works, right? The kids love Fortnite. Dan Ryckert skin coming soon!Giant Bomb sums up its new monthly ($9.99 per month) and annual ($99.99 per year) subscriptions:If you sign up today, you’ll get ad-free RSS feeds for all of our podcasts and access to premium-only Discord channels (like behind-the-scenes, Town Hall Q&As, and more). We are going to launch very simple and we will grow and adjust from there. This all finally came together literally hours ago, and we couldn’t even update the language on the sign up page yet. The perks are a little different from what’s listed there, so If you have any questions, reach out on social and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. For example, our Discord verification process might be slow, so bear with us for now! The news feels like a pleasant combo-breaker after the May 1st one-two punch news of Giant Bomb’s content pause and Verge parent company Vox Media’s sale of gaming site Polygon to Valnet, a media company that’s suing TheWrap over its damning report of accusations of “almost sweatshop-level” working conditions.

The Final Fantasy games are among the greatest role-playing game series of all time. Since the first game was released in 1987 for personal computers, there have been many different mainline entries and spin-offs to get lost in. The series has been known for its heavy emphasis on high-quality presentation and intricate stories, with original characters and worlds that players can connect with. And because of that, the Final Fantasy series has continued to grow even more through the decades across multiple consoles.

A year ago, I wouldn't have believed my ears if you had told me that there would be a $7,000 gold-plated GPU on the market. However, that was before we saw scalpers sell the base GPU for $9,000 earlier this year, so suddenly a $7k price point doesn't seem that expensive. If you're in the mood for something as mighty as it is flashy, you can now score a gold-plated RTX 5090 from ROG, and honestly, it looks pretty amazing.

The days of fiddling with Adobe Photoshop, trying to find that one editing feature you believe will make your image truly shine, are long, long gone. The spotlight has now shifted to drag-and-drop design tools with easy-to-use interfaces and no steep learning curve to overcome before your image is Instagram-ready.

Last year, I upgraded to an ultrawide monitor from a dual-screen setup mainly because of the hype and aesthetics, and hoping to get an expansive real estate and immersive workspace. For someone who spends his day writing and editing, software testing, juggling between browser tabs, sometimes video/photo editing, and a bit of gaming over weekends, the idea of one giant screen to rule them all was seriously tempting.